Trump Declares Himself King as He Kills Congestion Pricing in New York

Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that he has ended New York’s congestion pricing , boasting in all caps that he “SAVED” the city in a Truth Social post that ended with the declaration “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

Six weeks ago, the city of New York launched a program to enact tolls on cars in the central business district of Manhattan south of 60th Street. On Wednesday, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sent a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul overturning the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the program.

During his presidential campaign, former New York resident Trump promised to end the program, and at one point, even Hochul wasn’t in favor of it. But in November, the governor revived the plan, and after it went into effect this year, the program got positive reviews. Traffic was reduced, public transportation received a boost, and greenhouse gas emissions and pollution went down. 

But that didn’t have any effect on the Trump administration. Duffy wrote in his letter that he  shares “the President’s concerns about the impacts to working class Americans who now have an additional financial burden,” and said the highway administration would work with the program’s sponsors “to discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations under this terminated pilot program.”

Hochul replied swiftly with a statement of her own posted to her X account, saying, “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.”

“We’ll see you in court,” Hochul added, announcing that the Metropolitan Transit Authority had initiated legal action to save the program.

Trump’s action seems to be an attempt to stir up the right-wing’s blind support of car culture, as well as a vindictive effort aimed at his hometown and former place of residence, which has spurned him ever since he entered politics. It remains to be seen how the fight over congestion pricing will play out in court, but only a president as petty as Trump would try to dictate a city’s traffic laws. 

Washington D.C.’s interim MAGA U.S. attorney is coming after Chuck Schumer for supposedly leading an “attack” on Supreme Court justices.

In a weirdly aggressive officewide email Wednesday, U.S. attorney Ed Martin cast Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the greater Trump administration as potential victims of violence specifically due to the rhetoric of Schumer (which has been mild at best compared to anything the president has ever said).

“One of the most abhorrent examples was when Senator Charles Schumer led a rally to attack US Supreme Court Justices,” Martin wrote in the email, referencing a tiff that Schumer and the conservative justices had over Roe v. Wade. “Schumer said, reading from notes in his hand: ‘I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released a whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.’” 

Martin then posited that these remarks, which Schumer walked back shortly after he made them five years ago, led directly to the alleged attacks at Justice Kavanaugh’s home, in which a man was arrested near Kavanaugh’s house with a knife, firearm, and zip ties.

Meanwhile, it’s obvious that revenge has been on the minds of the Trump administration from the moment he was defeated in 2020.

“We are the DC U.S. Attorney’s office; we are the guardians of federal workers,” Martin continued in the email, striking a clear “us versus them” chord, with “them” being anyone who doesn’t align perfectly with MAGA. “You and I must do whatever possible to assure government work is safe for all involved. We must protect our cops, our prosecutors, our DOGE employees, the President, and all other government employees.”

Schumer has yet to comment.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency may be trying to inflate the numbers of its spending cuts.

DOGE published an itemized list of canceled government contracts Monday accounting for an alleged $16 billion in spending. Almost half of those savings were attributed to a hefty $8 billion contract for D&G Support Services to provide “program and technical support services” to the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at the the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

There was just one problem: The DOGE website included a screenshot of the award, which showed that it was only worth $8 million, not $8 billion, as was the amount listed directly below the image.

The New York Times reported on the discrepancy Tuesday, and determined that the original contract—which started September 30, 2022—had initially been listed at a value of $8 billion in the Federal Procurement Data System. On January 22, 2025, the number was updated to $8 million. The contract said it had been signed January 30, 2025, and terminated the same day.

Now, it looks like DOGE is trying desperately to cover the mistake.

A visit to DOGE’s wall of receipts reflected the award’s actual $8 million value, but when clicking through to the D&G contract, a familiar inflated number appeared: $8 billion, plus a different signing date and a termination date pushed up to 2027. DOGE had linked to the original inaccurate contract, which supports its claim of massive savings. Meanwhile, its list reflects the accurate price.

In a statement to MeidasTouch, D&G Support Services “acknowledges that the previously reported contract value of $8 billion was incorrect.”

“The discrepancy appears to have resulted from a clerical error in the original government filing upon contract reward. The contract value had a ceiling of $8 million,” the statement said.

To add insult to injury, USASpending.com revealed that of that ceiling, only $2.5 had actually been spent, meaning that DOGE’s savings weren’t even $8 million, but more like $5.5 million.

The DOGE website boasted a total of $55 billion in cuts, which remained unchanged between Tuesday and Wednesday, despite the correction to DOGE’s accounting. It’s unclear how many more errors reside in DOGE’s buggy list of savings.

Lawmakers were taken aback Wednesday by the president’s clear stance on budget negotiations, seemingly shocked that Donald Trump had endorsed a House GOP bill that prioritizes his agenda over the Senate’s alternative resolution.

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump directly called out Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham for daring to tackle the president’s ambitious 2017 tax plan extension in a separate bill.

“The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” Trump posted. “We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”

“It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he added.

With the House in recess, Senate Republican leadership took the lead on drafting a potential salve—though it was apparently slimmer than Trump had hoped.

Conservatives are looking to cut approximately $2 trillion from entitlement programs, with Medicaid expected to take the biggest hit.

Graham’s measure consists of approximately $325 billion to fund the border and advance Trump’s deportation plans, as well as money to bolster defense and energy spending. Senate Republicans had opted to use a second reconciliation bill to extend Trump’s tax plan, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Trump has leaned into tariffs as a key component of affording an extension to the tax plan.

The Senate had teed up a vote on their resolution for later this week. Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to have lunch with Senate Republicans later Wednesday to “ease the tension,” reported NOTUS.

Still, Republicans—including some of Trump’s MAGA allies—were not expecting the president to bluster against their efforts.

“As they say, did not see that one coming,” Senator John Thune told Notus.

Donald Trump unloaded on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a Truth Social post Wednesday morning, accusing Zelenskiy of enjoying a “gravy train” from the United States and calling him a “Dictator without Elections.”

The post rambles, accusing the Ukrainian leader of being responsible for Russia’s invasion, claiming that the U.S. spent $200 billion more than Europe on Ukraine, and threatening Zelenskiy to “move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

Unsurprisingly, several of Trump’s claims aren’t true. The U.S. has actually allocated a total of $183 billion to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, with about $86.7 billion of it spent already. European commitments amount to $174 billion in addition to $50 billion in loans backed by revenue from frozen Russian assets. Hours before Trump’s post Wednesday, Zelenskiy warned that Trump needed to “be more truthful” and said that the president “lives in a disinformation space” fed by Russia.

Trump’s language and attitude towards Ukraine and Zelenskiy plays right into the hands of Russia and its autocratic leader Vladimir Putin. Putin has long been criticized for his anti-democratic path holding sham elections, so to pin the dictator label on Zelenskiy surely has him rejoicing. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already praised Trump for putting the onus of the war on the U.S., NATO, and Ukraine.

“He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,” Lavrov said Wednesday. “No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position.”

As Russian and U.S. representatives negotiated about the war in Saudi Arabia without their European or Ukrainian counterparts this week, these comments from Trump and Russian leaders suggest that any proposed deal from their talks will almost certainly be bad for Ukraine and leave Russia in a position of strength, with Trump claiming victory regardless.